Austin Appelbee was 13 when the sea swallowed the family’s plans.
It was a Friday in January in Quindalup, Western Australia, and what began as an afternoon of kayaking and paddleboarding with his mother Joanne and his siblings Beau, 12, and Grace, 8, turned into a nightmare when the wind dragged them out to sea. “We lost the paddles and drifted farther and farther from shore”, he later recounted. His mother made a desperate decision: send him back alone, in a kayak, to get help.
The kayak began taking on water. Austin abandoned it, took off his life jacket because it weighed him down with every stroke, and decided to swim. Four kilometers. Almost four hours. “I was thinking about my mother, Beau and Grace, and my friends”, he said. When he finally felt sand beneath his feet, he did not think about resting: he thought his family might still be out there, alive.
He raised the alarm at 6 in the evening, with daylight already fading. Rescuers and police found Joanne, Beau and Grace almost 14 kilometers from the coast, clinging to a board. Marine rescue commander Paul Bresland called what Austin did “superhuman”. He prefers another word: he says he only did what he had to do.
